The ExFighter

[Arcanist]

I could have a Clone spell set up.

Why does everyone ignore the classic Ice Assassin shenanigans?

[Snowbluff]

Why does everyone ignore the classic Ice Assassin shenanigans?

I think Ice Assassin's are rendered helpless by AMF.

Clone just revives me if I die.

[Psyren]

I have to ask why, in a TO thread, we're debating intentions or motivation. It's completely and totally irrelevant; he's asking about legality and weaknesses; he's not asking "hur dur these magicians did this because they're stupid does it work?"

How is this TO? "I can do X without being a T1 class by hiring a bunch of T1 classes!" That's like saying "Hay, if I hier Pun-Pun I cna do something kewl, chekc this out guzy!" There's no optimization here, it's all done on the backs of real classes.

I...completely fail to see how the thread is a sham. He's asking about legality and weaknesses in the build. I don't spot people in caster TO threads calling those a sham; why the hate for melee TO?

Because it's STILL CASTER TO.

Are you sure? It at least allows a method around the AMF.

You misunderstood me. Your question was "can epic spellcasting be used effectively without mitigation" to which my answer was "no" - without mitigation, epic spells are far too inefficient to be practical. But I then went on to say that mitigation is easy for a cabal of spellcasters, who would have every reason to co-operate in taking down a creature that can ignore most magical offense.

[Story]

How is this TO? "I can do X without being a T1 class by hiring a bunch of T1 classes!" That's like saying "Hay, if I hier Pun-Pun I cna do something kewl, chekc this out guzy!" There's no optimization here, it's all done on the backs of real classes.

Mind switching into epic monsters is generally considered TO. The fact that he had to use real casters to get there in addition to TO cheese just makes it even sadder.

[Snowbluff]

Mind switching into epic monsters is generally considered TO. The fact that he had to use real casters to get there in addition to TO cheese just makes it even sadder.

And, that, whoever asked that question, is why I dislike this thread.

Thank you Story and Psyren.

[GreenSerpent]

I'm agreeing with Snowbluff, Psyren, and Story.

[Venger]

I'm agreeing with Snowbluff, Psyren, and Story.

me too

I think Ice Assassin's are rendered helpless by AMF.

nope. Ice assassin is instantaneous duration, so is immune to AMF

[Snowbluff]

Glad you think so.

nope. Ice assassin is instantaneous duration, so is immune to AMF

Ice Assassins are instantaneous illusions (IIRC), not conjurations. They would turn back into gossamer and snow.

[Venger]

Ice Assassins are instantaneous illusions (IIRC), not conjurations. They would turn back into gossamer and snow.

they are instantaneous illusions, and have the shadow descriptor, which says this:

Shadow
A shadow spell creates something that is partially real from extradimensional energy. Such illusions can have real effects. Damage dealt by a shadow illusion is real.

in which case... I don't really know if that's evidence that it is or is not nerfed in an AMF.

due to their prevalence in high op stuff, I'd always thought that they weren't vulnerable to kid stuff like AMF. are they? that makes IA a lot less powerful

[Snowbluff]

they are instantaneous illusions, and have the shadow descriptor, which says this:



in which case... I don't really know if that's evidence that it is or is not nerfed in an AMF.

due to their prevalence in high op stuff, I'd always thought that they weren't vulnerable to kid stuff like AMF. are they? that makes IA a lot less powerful

Shadow spells are typically victim to spell resistance, so AMF would work.

They are still incredibly strong. They would just need to stay out of an AMF like a real Wizard.

Just a heads up/fyi/for reference, Simulacra is the younger bro of Ice Assassin. It's also rather good.

[RFLS]

How is this TO? "I can do X without being a T1 class by hiring a bunch of T1 classes!" That's like saying "Hay, if I hier Pun-Pun I cna do something kewl, chekc this out guzy!" There's no optimization here, it's all done on the backs of real classes.

Wow. Let's start with the basics- ad hominem attacks just ain't cool. As far as I can tell, he's not a dimwit and he's not saying "look how kewl I am!"

For your initial question- it's TO because it uses RAW but not RAI to achieve an individual with a set of powers far greater than the expected average for the level those powers are obtained at. Last I checked, that's pretty close to the definition of TO.

I find your labeling of T1 classes as "real classes" to be more than a little disturbing, and it makes me wonder exactly how prejudiced you are against anything that's a non-caster build. This build absolutely uses T1 classes to get it to work; you can't get around that in 3.5 if you're trying to achieve ultimate, cosmic power. You're essentially attacking the build because 3.5 was designed (largely) by a bunch of people who didn't entirely understand the system they were working with.

Because it's STILL CASTER TO.

How is this TO?

Welp....that's awkward. Self contradiction is fun. Go ahead, explain how you're not contradicting yourself.

[Randomguy]

I think I may have actually found a way to kill this thing. It's cheesy as hell, but honestly so is this build, so I think it's fair:

Step 1: Bind or summon a mirror mephit and have it make a simulacrum of an Adamantine Clockwork Horror. (It's CL is only just high enough). Repeat until you have about 100 of them. These are useful for their disjunction ability: They'll take down the AMF. You'll be able to put it back up in a round, but one round is all that's necessary.
If a wizard uses 6 9th level slots (he's got enough int for 2 bonus slots of 9th level, see below) to cast maximized SM6 for 5 mirror mephits each casting, plus 6 8th level slots for maximized SM5 with 3 mephits a casting, plus 2 4th level slots for a mephit each, they can get 100 simulacrums in 2 days. (Mirror mephits are really overpowered).

Step 2: Get yourself a vial of atramen oil, augmented six times by the Augment Alchemy feat. The tricky part is both hitting the required DC 140 and getting an epic feat without being epic, but here's how:

1. First you need to gate something smart with more than 20 HD, for example, an Elder Brain. If you can't get it to agree to help you, then make an Ice Assassin of it.
2. Make it very clear that you don't intend to attack it with the ice assassin, and use Programmed Amnesia on the ice assassin to get rid of it's urge to kill the elder brain. This is just to avoid making enemies.
3. Have the elder brain manifest Psychic Reformation to get 24 ranks in Alchemy
4. Emprace/Shun the dark chaos to give it Augment Alchemy
5. Get Zog the elder brain a wand/scroll/watever of Guidance of the avatar.
6. Hire 50 level 1 gnome experts with max ranks in alchmy, skill focus craft (alchemy) and a +1 int mod so that they can use aid another to help Zog. You can now hit the required DC

So you now have a vial of atramen oil that gives a -28 penalty to fort saves on a ranged touch attack no save. (I call it the Vial of Prepare for a Grizzly Death). After getting hit with this, the ExFighter's Fort save goes down to +21.

Step 3: Bump up your save DC's. Here's what I'm using, but there are probably other ways to do it:

Int score: 18 + 2 (race) + 3 (age) + 5 (levels) + 5 (inherent) + 6 (item) = 39
That's (+14) to spell DC's.

19 (9th level spell) + 14 (intelligence) + 2 (spell focus and greater spell focus) + 2 (cold focus and greater cold focus) + 2 (icemail armour) (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20030323a) +4 (draconic aura).

= DC 43. So the ExFighter, after getting hit with the oil, has no chance at all of making this save.

The feats needed for this are Heighten spell, spell focus transmutation, greater spell focus transmutation, cold focus, greater cold focus, snowcasting, draconic aura and dragontouched. That's 8 feats, so you have enough and some to spare thanks to flaws and bonus feats. Maximize spell is only necessary to do things fast, but you've got room for it anyway.

Step 4: Bump up your attack rolls. 20 Quickened true strike + 5 (dex from being a chronotyryn) + 3 (dex from bite of the whererat) + 20 (BAB) (divine power through a wand or Arcane Disciple) + 2 (magic tattoos) +6 (divine favour through an item) = +56 to hit touch AC, so that's an automatic hit.

Step 5: The battle plan:
Cast veil on you and your miniture army of simulacri to look like a small cloud.
Cast all necessary buffs. (those listed above plus any others that might be useful, such as shapechange (into a chronotyryn) and elemental body (air). )
Use divinations to determine the location of the ExFighter. (This shouldn't be hard, just turn into an elemental weird for a round).
Have all the adamantine horrors ready an action to disjoin the antimagic field when you port in.
Greater teleport/greater planeshift within range of the ExFighter but outside the AMF. Hopefully the wizard should get a surprise round.
The horrors disjoin. This is basically guaranteed to work. (0.7 chance of failure by my math, assuming the simulacri get half the CL of the actual horrors). The AMF is now gone until the ExFighter restores it as a free action, but that's long enough.
Move closer (since the AMF was bigger then your range for Glass Strike).
Cast Glass Strike (it also affects objects, so you're not immune to it). There is no way for you to make this save (to my knowledge).

Possible countertactic the ExFighter could use: Get a 1/day item of MoP to cast on yourself each day. If the AMF is ever disjoined, your MoP would be un-supressed, so you could get another +20 to the saving throw and succeed it.

Counter-counter tactic: Make 200 horrors instead of 100, 1/2 ready an action to disjoin and the rest ready an action to disintegrate. You'd fail about 15% of the saves and take an average of 735 damage. Also, the wizard doesn't need to spend any money or feats on DC boosters.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I find your labeling of T1 classes as "real classes" to be more than a little disturbing, and it makes me wonder exactly how prejudiced you are against anything that's a non-caster build. This build absolutely uses T1 classes to get it to work; you can't get around that in 3.5 if you're trying to achieve ultimate, cosmic power. You're essentially attacking the build because 3.5 was designed (largely) by a bunch of people who didn't entirely understand the system they were working with.

I don't think he's labeling T1 as the only real classes. I think he's labeling T5 as fake classes. Or NPC classes.

Welp....that's awkward. Self contradiction is fun. Go ahead, explain how you're not contradicting yourself.

I'm pretty he meant it's not fighter TO, or non-caster TO.

[GreenSerpent]

From what I can see he isn't immune to the native effects of planes. So throw him to the Positive Energy Plane and watch the explosion.

[toapat]

From what I can see he isn't immune to the native effects of planes. So throw him to the Positive Energy Plane and watch the explosion.

doesnt he have construct traits, considering he is part Zodar

[Story]

Actually, you can skip all that stuff. As soon as the AMF goes down, all you need is a single Holy Word.

The real question is how long the AMF goes down for and whether it is long enough to be effected by anything. RAW it's unclear.

[toapat]

Actually, you can skip all that stuff. As soon as the AMF goes down, all you need is a single Holy Word.

The real question is how long the AMF goes down for and whether it is long enough to be effected by anything. RAW it's unclear.

depends on how you strip the field.

Dwemerkeeper would probably bring it down permanently. But anything else would probably be by duration

[Story]

Well as long as you can get it to go down long enough for your readied Holy Word to go off, the exact duration doesn't really matter.

[TuggyNE]

Well as long as you can get it to go down long enough for your readied Holy Word to go off, the exact duration doesn't really matter.

Don't you mean blasphemy? Pretty sure the ExFighter is Good, or even Exalted Good.

[demigodus]

Also, the dispel resolves without triggering any action, not even a free one. This either counts as forgoing the roll (and thus a natural 1), or auto succeeding (and thus a natural 20).

Even if this is correct, what on earth makes you think that a total dispel check of merely 40 (20 from level + nat 20) is an auto-success against a level 20 wizard's buffs? Especially at this optimization level?

Dispel checks aren't attacks/saves : a natural 20 is not an auto-success. If that wizard's CL was 30 or higher, your natural 20 isn't good enough anymore.

[Anthrowhale]

All I need to do is leave a bunch in a weightless plane

Black holes can't exist without gravitational pull. A hypothetical negation of gravity on/in a black hole would result in a very spectacular explosion on the E=mc^2 scale.

Why does everyone ignore the classic Ice Assassin shenanigans?

I'm not clear on how an Ice Assassin would be effective.

You misunderstood me.

I don't think so. In the original post, when I said "AMF is not perfect. The exceptions that I'm aware of are:... 3) Epic Spells. No suprise here, but Epic spells are totally broken." I stated the vulnerability that you are discussing.

attacks

Thanks. Discussion forums have become much better in the last decade.

I think I may have actually found a way to kill this thing.

Nice

The weaknesses I see are:
(1) Augment Alchemy (Atramen Oil) increases the duration but not the Fort penalty because a penalty is not damage.
(2) I'm unclear on whether or not you can do a Psychic Reformation on an Ice Assassin Elder Brain, because it requires burning XP.
(3) How are you transporting 100 clockwork horrors?
(4) We need to settle what happens when Disjunction succeeds against the AMF. My starting point is that Disjunction can have no effect on an (Ex) ability, and hence the ability stays active even when the Disjunction destroys the AMF. Consequently, the Disjunction takes out spells or items within the AMF, but the AMF is not down for more than an instant. What is your logic?
(5) How are you throwing Atramen oil and casting glass strike?
(6) Glass Strike: Object has an unclear effect when cast on a creature. 4 cubic feet becoming glass is certainly unhealthy though.

throw him to the Positive Energy Plane

There are three issues here. The first is that throwing is difficult, the second is that all fort saves on the positive energy plane are autosuccesses, and the third is that Umbral Blot Planar Travel allows plane shift at will.

[TuggyNE]

Off-topic for catgirl-killing:

Spoiler

Show

Black holes can't exist without gravitational pull. A hypothetical negation of gravity on/in a black hole would result in a very spectacular explosion on the E=mc^2 scale.

A weightless plane need not be free of gravitic force, but merely have uniform attraction in all directions (for example, the Plane of Air has little mass to create gravity, and the Plane of Water has the same mass in all directions, so it tends to cancel out*). So I don't see any particular reason to assume a black hole would be unable to create a local gravity field.


*Presumably there is some compensation for infinite size that prevents infinite clumping and pressure, such as a modified cosmological constant.

[demigodus]

Off-topic for catgirl-killing:

Spoiler

Show

A weightless plane need not be free of gravitic force, but merely have uniform attraction in all directions (for example, the Plane of Air has little mass to create gravity, and the Plane of Water has the same mass in all directions, so it tends to cancel out*). So I don't see any particular reason to assume a black hole would be unable to create a local gravity field.


*Presumably there is some compensation for infinite size that prevents infinite clumping and pressure, such as a modified cosmological constant.

Problem is, he is trying to move the blackhole via telekinesis. Which either implies astonomical CL shenanigans, a plane where gravity/mass is negated, or a tiny black hole (black holes with mass only equivalent to 200lb or even less can exist. Just, they would more or less instantly explode in an explosion that makes a nuclear bomb look like a small candle).

[Snowbluff]

Exactly, I asked Afroakuma and got a similiar answer. Also, I don't know whether or not a black hole couldn't hold itself together. Regardless of mass, many other things are going on there.

I think the only explosion would be the result of the polar forces repelling like forces. That shouldn't be enough to break nuclear force, right? So if the black hole was held together by anything other than gravity, it won't explode.

I would have it glued together if it was in danger of exploding, anyway.

Telekinesis measure how much you can move in pounds. In a weightless plane, nothing else is gravitating the black hole, so it's weight (not mass) is none. Outside of a weightless plane I would use large objects to gravitate the black hole into the Gate if I could not merely place the Gate in the hole's path.

[Hirax]

Regarding blowing up the AMF temporarily, lots of creatures have various kinds of at will auras that can be dispelled, but the creature can then just put it right back up. The first creatures that came to mind were angels, which can put up their aura again as a free action on their turn. Dispelling a permanent emanation suppresses it for 2d4 rounds. My inkling is that angels are the best thing to go off of, though if there are other examples of auras working differently it'd probably be best to start compiling them and look for one that fits the best, or if there isn't a clear winner, perhaps just pick the most common. The only important thing is that the aura either stays down multiple rounds, or stays down until ExFighter's turn, so only auras that can come back out of initiative order (IE, immediately) are going to be relevant to countering attackers for the purposes of this thread. I don't see a reason to change this on account of the colossus ability being (EX), if the aura can somehow be taken down, and in this case it unambiguously can, it should behave like other auras.

Assuming the above works, as far as getting blasphemy or word of balance to cook off, sanctum spell makes those level 6 spells (pick another method if desired), and thus valid contingency targets. Have the contingency set to go off when you say squiddleydoodlefluffer. I've long lost track of what's banned, but assuming you can get an all day CL of 100 and a high move speed (gold dragons are good for a 200' fly speed), you should be able to cast disjunction as a standard action, walk up as a move action, and say squiddleydoodlefluffer when you're close enough.

[Kazyan]

I would have it glued together if it was in danger of exploding, anyway.

TO is when you glue the black hole together so it doesn't explode.

[Snowbluff]

TO is when you glue the black hole together so it doesn't explode.

lololololol rolfmao
Sovereign Glue is a wonderful thing, Kazyan. I am not kidding, one side of the gate I would push it through would coat in glue. All I need is a way to keep it from exploding in one round or to speed up the gluing process...

[Kazyan]

I know; I just saw the opportunity to out-of-context it for a moment.

Also, a 200lb black hole would be, napkin-mathing it from Wikipedia, 20 Tsar Bombas.

[Snowbluff]

I know; I just saw the opportunity to out-of-context it for a moment.

I might sig quote you either way.

Also, a 200lb black hole would be, napkin-mathing it from Wikipedia, 20 Tsar Bombas.

Lack of precedent aside, not nearly big enough. We have to destroy the planet or at the very least change it's orbit enough to knock it into the sun.

[Arcanist]

TO is when you glue the black hole together so it doesn't explode.

Sovereign Glue is a wonderful thing, Kazyan.

I think Snowbluff is the official Avatar of PC-dom